IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/natcom/v9y2018i1d10.1038_s41467-018-04475-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Overpumping leads to California groundwater arsenic threat

Author

Listed:
  • Ryan Smith

    (Stanford University)

  • Rosemary Knight

    (Stanford University)

  • Scott Fendorf

    (Stanford University)

Abstract

Water resources are being challenged to meet domestic, agricultural, and industrial needs. To complement finite surface water supplies that are being stressed by changes in precipitation and increased demand, groundwater is increasingly being used. Sustaining groundwater use requires considering both water quantity and quality. A unique challenge for groundwater use, as compared with surface water, is the presence of naturally occurring contaminants within aquifer sediments, which can enter the water supply. Here we find that recent groundwater pumping, observed through land subsidence, results in an increase in aquifer arsenic concentrations in the San Joaquin Valley of California. By comparison, historic groundwater pumping shows no link to current groundwater arsenic concentrations. Our results support the premise that arsenic can reside within pore water of clay strata within aquifers and is released due to overpumping. We provide a quantitative model for using subsidence as an indicator of arsenic concentrations correlated with groundwater pumping.

Suggested Citation

  • Ryan Smith & Rosemary Knight & Scott Fendorf, 2018. "Overpumping leads to California groundwater arsenic threat," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 9(1), pages 1-6, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-04475-3
    DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04475-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04475-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41467-018-04475-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Md Fahim Hasan & Ryan Smith & Sanaz Vajedian & Rahel Pommerenke & Sayantan Majumdar, 2023. "Global land subsidence mapping reveals widespread loss of aquifer storage capacity," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 14(1), pages 1-10, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-04475-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.